I want to go further and add climate change to my lessons. How can I do that?
There are many brilliant resources available that can help you add teaching about climate change to your curriculum. A great place to start is the STEM Learning UK website which has resources mapped to key stages and subjects. There are also fantastic resources available from the Met Office and the Royal Meteorological Society among many others.
If you want to go even further, your school or college can develop and implement a climate action plan with the support of trained Climate Ambassadors volunteers, seek funding to improve your setting’s grounds with National Education Nature Park or develop climate related research in partnership with professionals from academia or industry through the Royal Society’s Tomorrow’s Climate Scientists programme.
I’m worried about adding to the anxiety of the young people in my school or college, how do I address it?
Climate and eco-anxiety are real concerns for young people, and studies on how to actively address this challenge are gathering community feedback and best practice. Many experts suggested that having access to high quality knowledge about climate change and having open conversations between young people and adults are critical to addressing anxiety. Discussing ways to tackle climate change and taking local climate action is the next key step.
Unfortunately, most young people still leave education with many misconceptions about climate change as revealed by a recent recent school leaver survey. Getting involved in Show Your Stripes in School activities can be a starting point for developing an action plan to bring deeper and wider climate education into your school or college.
How do I talk to parents about what we are doing?
Sometimes, teachers are nervous about addressing climate change because they think it is a controversial topic. This is not the case. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing recent global warming. The most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s assessment of climate change describes the human influence on climate as “unequivocal". In England, the Department for Education has been addressing climate change and its impacts through the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy and the Education Estates Strategy, which expects early years settings, schools and colleges to develop climate action plans, embed sustainability leadership and improve education estates to mitigate the effects of climate change.